


Maceration

by ticktockclockwork



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 22:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticktockclockwork/pseuds/ticktockclockwork





	Maceration

Maceration.  
  
That was what Sherlock had once called it. John remembers this as he stares at his fingers, the tips of which are puckered, curling in on themselves.  
  
 _“Maceration.”  Sherlock mumbles this into John’s damp hair. He gives the answer despite the lack of a question and John’s finger tips settle against Sherlock’s, where they’d been attempting to make two into one._  
  
 _“Hm?” He asks because he knows that’s what Sherlock wants._  
  
 _“Maceration. Dermatological maceration. The absorption of water into the skin, causing it to wrinkle and prune. Generally due to long term exposure to said moisture.”_  
  
 _“Hm.” John lifts Sherlock’s dermatological maceration to his lips and touches them there, smiling at the fact that yes, he knows this, and Sherlock must know he knows this, though the compulsion to show off is still stronger. John smiles because Sherlock’s mouth refuses to stay shut even in the most quiet of moments. John smiles because right now, no words are coming out, not anymore. His tongue does the talking, following the river basins in Sherlock’s fingerprints, carves his name into Sherlock’s DNA._  
  
Sherlock had done much more than rearrange John’s DNA to the tune of his own name. He’d done much more, instead leaving hairline fractures along his ribs in the shape and sound of those eight toxic letters. He’d branded John with his teeth, to the neck, to the back, to his lips and chest and hands. He’s sewn his signature into the lining of John’s throat so that his name was always on his breath, in and out, Sherlock, Sherlock. And then he’d left, ripping the stitches and stealing the key.  
  
John curls his fingers into the palm of his hand and turns more onto his side, resting his cheek to the cool porcelain of the tub. The water was murky, cold, but John’s brow was burning with the memories he thought he’d properly recorded, with the images of Sherlock as blurry now, as his eyesight.  
  
 _“We should get out.”_  
  
 _The words were vile and wrong and John immediately ignored them. They had no conviction behind them, thrown out and wasted in a half attempt at propriety. Sherlock’s decorum was lack-luster at best, amongst the noblest of people, so it was laughable now that the man so prone to absolute gluttonous indulgence, would recommend the preemptive ending of such a wonderful delight. John was in complete disagreement. The words went unrecognized._  
  
 _Instead he held Sherlock’s hand in front of his face, his eyes half lidded. As Sherlock suggested such ignorant actions, John continued painting universes to Sherlock’s long fingers, leaving swirling self-contained eons on his knuckles, glowing red from fresh wounds, broken flesh. Sherlock was unfathomably steady, while John’s tremor entered stage right, shaking the drops till they made safe passage to their alabaster landing pads. It was Morse code on his skin, a weak plea for help, as perplexing as Sherlock’s previous suggestion._  
  
The SOS was real this time, left along the glossy basin's edge, a line a dot a line, now desperate, no longer just a whim. He was suffocating, the tub too small, the water too heavy. How two grown men had fit in here just months earlier, he could not understand. Perhaps they’d never been two. Perhaps it had always just been one. Two hearts. Two bodies. One existence. Never one without the other. Fractions would erupt once separation was a factor. Half of a whole. Part of a pair. One of two. One from two.  
  
Oh how he ached. Heartbreak had always been such a textbook excuse for what he was feeling. The inability of the human vocabulary to properly explain the emotional pain of separation. Heartbreak. It sounded as unintelligent on his tongue as it did on paper. But he had been looking. And nothing described the shattered remains in his chest as well as that simple word. Ten letters, overused and wrung out. Heartbreak. How absurd.  
  
But that was exactly what it was. Unadulterated heartbreak. For two had become one without the voluntary consent of the other. Assumptions. Conclusions. Evisceration of the cruelest kind. He’d left nothing behind but the festering sores of love and loss.  
  
 _“The bleeding has stopped.”_  
  
 _“Yes. That’s good.”_  
  
 _“Yes. It would not do to have you die now. And especially not here. What would the neighbors say?”_  
  
 _“John Hamish Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, found dead in his flatmate’s arms. Cause of death? Maceration.”_  
  
 _The sleepy chuckle shook his head and he smiled in return, turning despite the lingering ache to look up at the taller man. “State of undress is questionable, but given his priorities it could be assumed he was aggressively pursuing a relationship with said flatmate.”_  
  
 _“Poor fellow, says the shopkeep next door. Chasing a lost cause. Doesn’t he know said flatmate is unequivocally married to his work? The answer to this question is yet to be determined. No answer from flatmate. Flatmate also deceased.” He let out a long suffering sigh and sank more in the water, his foot lifting to press his toe to the dripping faucet._  
  
 _“Poor fellow.”_  
  
 _“Indeed. How he must suffer. “_  
  
 _Lips touched his shoulder and he tipped his head to the side, stretching muscle, clearing room on the canvas that was his body. Sherlock brushed along the curve of his throat, red and blue and black, oils and acrylics._  
  
 _“It was never a lost cause.”_  
  
 _John closed his eyes tighter and burned those words to the lining of his skull, carved them into bone. His response was spoken down Sherlock’s throat. “Don’t worry. I was never lost.”_  
  
The water that has slipped out of the ocean and onto the floor looks nothing like it did that night so long ago. Now it’s silver and cold, mixed and mingled with the non-slip rug. John’s arm hangs over the side, rivulets running like veins, emptying, drying and dying up in their last journey to the linoleum beyond of 221B Baker Street. Nothing is the same anymore. The words out of his mouth, the ones he covers up in jumpers he hates. The letters on his teeth and tongue and lips, the sentences stuck under his fingernails and shaken out of his hair. It’s all wrong, all foreign and unknown and 13/26. Missing letters, missing, missing, milk carton gone. They fell three stories and drifted down the gutter. They were swept away by clumsy bicycle riders, and frantic nurses. They were declared by the morgue attendant, and toe-tagged by the morbid assistant. They were buried and mourned and they were rotting in cedar, smelling of death and regret.  
  
 _“She has to be suspicious.”_  
  
 _“She’s too old to be suspicious.”_  
  
 _“She’s too old to not be.”_  
  
 _“We told her an hour.”_  
  
 _“It’s been four.”_  
  
 _“Clearly then, that’s a sign she should understand.”_  
  
 _“She worries.”_  
  
 _“She shouldn’t.”_  
  
 _“But she does.”_  
  
 _“It’s nonsense.”_  
  
 _“Its normal.”_  
  
 _“Normal.”_  
  
 _“You know what I mean.”_  
  
 _“I do. This does not mean I agree.”_  
  
 _“When have you ever.”_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _“We should get out.”_  
  
They say drowning is a peaceful way to go. Once you’ve gotten past the panic, of course. It’s not painful. Less kind than hypothermia, but less gruesome than, say, a bullet wound to the shoulder. Perhaps this was just a poetic description of something horrific. Like a broken heart. Wishfully untrue, though despairingly honest. John wouldn’t mind that so much. Drowning that is. No he wouldn’t mind that at all.  
  
He slid down under the water, knees bent like mountains, their peaks crying out of the ocean. His last goodbyes were etched into the escaping air piercing the surface. His hands dug pits into his hair, gripped tight to rip the thoughts from his mind. He wanted it all to be gone too, to wrap himself in black wool, all cheekbones and high collars, and let himself soak. Let the weight of it pull him down into the depths of his despair and swallow him whole. Turn him stone. Let him drown.  
  
Death by maceration.  
  
Poor fellow, indeed.  
  
  
  
  
He’d told her an hour. That was a week ago. 168. 10080. 604800. The tea would be cold by now. Pity. Nothing could be done, though. Not for the tea. Not for the soldier. He’d left the tub full, left behind his shame and his hate and his grief. He’d shuffled, his steps dictating crime scene photos that were sure to come. Through the hall, clothes dripping, hanging to his flesh like snakeskin. He wanted to rip them off. He wanted week old tea.  
  
He got a bed instead, a bed that smelled too much like heartbreak and drowning. He crawled to the center, submitted to its expensive offense, the arsenal of the sense. The bed fought dirty. He didn’t stand a chance in hell.  
  
There were papers amongst the sheets. Case documents, photos, ids, trinkets. All souvenirs, reminders of successes and failures. Of detective inspectors and crime scene tape. Of adulterous men and vicious women. Of hate and ignorance. Of trust, and belief. It would return. But John would not. Their doubt was murder, not of one, but of two. Well founded, but just a poor mans paved road. Good intentions. Wrongly spent. They’d seen nothing but the fog. It wasn’t until you were in the trenches that you could see the battlefield. They’d been cannon fodder. Sherlock the gun.  
  
 _“I give them two hours.”_  
  
 _“Wrong. Thirty minutes.”_  
  
 _“… bullocks.”_  
  
 _“Do you want to move?”_  
  
 _“Not an inch.”_  
  
 _“Me either.”_  
  
“Not an inch.” He whispers to the room, to the skull that has resurfaced. “You took a mile.” It doesn’t respond. He’s not surprised Sherlock liked him better. He is surprised Sherlock liked him best. Flattered. Terrified. The feeling was mutual. He understood that now. Too little, too late, unfortunately. “Take me with you.” The words were missing letters, broken and brittle. Too little too late, unfortunately. No ghost was around to hear them. “Take me with you. Please.”  
  
 _“I love you Sherlock.”_  
  
 _“Love is dangerous. And a disadvantage.”_  
  
 _“That’s okay.”_  
  
 _“Is it?”_  


_"Mhm."_

  
_“Oh.”_  


  
_“John?”_  
  
 _“Yes, Sherlock?”_  
  
 _“When I said dangerous, there you were.”_  
  
 _“Yes, Sherlock.”_  
  
 _“If I said I’m dangerous, for you…”_  
  
  
 _“I’d say I love you too.”_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _“I love you John.”_  
  
“I love you too.”  
  



End file.
